HP Lovecraft's Magazine of Horror - Weird Tales

a meal out of you. Malky and I didn’t have any choice though,
so we used a very bony set of skeleton keys to open the mystical
locks on the dormitory door. We badly needed some friendly
advice on how to survive the performance of Doctor Dee’s
play at the weekend.
As we scrambled through the eerie hallways of the staff
quarters, the ghouls in the grounds scrabbled at the windowpanes,
and inside the building, long, loping things tried to flute
in our ears in the dark. Malky clutched a burning Hand of
Glory to light our way and shield us from the gazes of the worst
of the nightmares. He told me that he’d found it in the medical
waste bags dumped outside the infirmary, but from the smell of
the smoke, I guessed it was probably a mandrake root he’d
filched from the kitchen garden.
We found the door to Mister King’s room and rattled the
doorknob to attract his attention, expecting it to be locked. The
door swung slowly open and we slipped inside.
“Hello, boys, I’ve been expecting you,” the conjurer said
before telling us to close the door.
He stood with his back to us, dressed in a velvet smoking
jacket and apparently stirring the log fire burning in the grate.
“Sir! Sir! Please, sir!” Malky babbled before I hushed him.
“How did you know we’d come?” I asked.
Mister King turned slowly and sighed, “Because you’ve
already been to see me, in a manner of speaking.” Stepping
away from the fire, he let us see the dismembered remains of
the two small, gray-skinned things which he was trying to burn,
things which had once looked like us.
“In the name of the wee man!” Malky yelped. The creatures
were melting like foul-smelling cheese in the fire. They
had come off a poor second in sleight-of-hand-to-hand combat
involving Mister King’s fire irons.
“What indeed? So-called Enochian angels, I think,” our
teacher replied, stroking his drooping mustache with one hand
while leveling a red-hot poker at us with the other. “And I’ll
need a little proof of identity to make sure you’re both really
who you should be, if you see what I mean.”
“Aw no, what’re we gonnae do?” Malky whispered to me.
“How do we do that?”
“It really is us, Mister King,” I said and pinched Malky’s
flabby gut.
“Ow—that hurt, Tinker!” Malky squealed, cuffing my
head. “What d’ya think yer tryin’ to do?”
Mister King smiled and nodded.
“You’ve put me at ease, boys. Your lethal twins were much
better behaved. It seems the otherworldly creatures which
deluded Doctor Dee are in our midst and impersonating people
to further their dubious ends. I would suppose that some of
the staff are under the Enochians’ spell—the one’s who aren’t
mad enough to want your class to stage the end of the world.
Your class may also have been infiltrated . . .” He kicked the
rest of the dismembered inhuman remains into the coals and
put on the kettle. “We need to have a little chat to plan our
strategy, but first—cocoa, anyone?”
“DEAR God, something’s eaten the Baby Jesus’ face!” Miss
Sim cried shrilly. She flung the prop infant across the stage and
into the stalls. “How in heaven’s name can anyone expect me
to work in these conditions?”
“The show must go on, dear lady,” Mister King said soothingly,
“and someone with your remarkable talents can always
rise above the inadequacies of any situation.”
He looked at us speculatively. We were in full costume, but
the dress rehearsal was not going well.
Those of us cast as Arabs wore tea towels tied round our
heads with snake belts. Moldy old tartan blankets made do as
our robes, and we’d had to draw sandal straps on our feet with
greasepaint. In a misguided attempt at realism, Poor Wullie had
stupidly drawn on his soles too and now he could barely move
without sliding across the boards. I hoped our fake beards were
cotton wool, but from their color, smell and general itchiness,
I suspected they were made out of loft insulation material.
Some of the other boys seemed to think it was candy-floss and
had gone from chewing their facial hair to eating it.
“Agh!” yelled Jonah. The polystyrene wings of his scarab
beetle costume had got caught in the scenery again. The rest of
the giant insects gathered round to help and a locust untangled
Jonah.
“Ya divvy,” Malky sneered even as he slapped his bare
arms to keep warm, streaking his blue greasepaint. Being the
biggest boy in the class in all dimensions, he’d got the part of
the high heid yin of the jinn. Unfortunately, all he got to wear
apart from the color blue were a tea-cosy turban and a loincloth
that looked like an enormous nappy, so he was freezing.
“This is a farce!” despaired Miss Sim.
“I think it’s rather more like a pantomime,” Mister King
replied sardonically.
“I seem to recall that Pantomime is supposed to be next
door to Pandemonium . . .” she sighed.
“Well, let me help with the lighting and effects, and perhaps
we can save the day.”
Our drama coach nodded wearily as she went back to her
script so she didn’t see Mister King’s meaningful wink at me.
She was still under the spell that hid the true meaning of this
production from herself and the rest of the staff. Only Mister
King, being an illusionist too, had seen behind the veil dark
forces had cast over events.
“Places, everyone,” Miss Sim ordered and we began to run
through Al-Hazred for the last time.
The Tragedie of the Mad Moor is an old, familiar story: A poet
flips his lid on jimson weed after getting one too many bad
reviews, goes on holiday in the ruins of Babylon and the secret
underground chambers of Memphis—the Arabian city, not the
one Elvis lived in. Then the idiot spends ten years lost in the
Empty Quarter, the great southern desert of Arabia, trying to
charm the jinn, djinn or genii—whatever—with his awful doggerel.
Finally, some kind soul, or more likely, an abomination
from outside space and time takes pity on him, telling him to go
and write a book. The Moorish McGonagall hitches a lift from a
passing caravan and heads for the publishing hotbed of
Damascus. The poet settles down and writes his magnum opus,
al Azif, the pocket guide to ultimate evil, better known in Dee’s
English paperback translation as the Necronomicon. Thankfully,
a critic acting above and beyond the call of duty tears the old
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